Lou Dobbs, the Sports Metaphor

The NBA draft is tomorrow evening, and ESPN’s Bill Simmons and Chad Ford run their mock draft in this entertaining piece. Simmons trashes Yi Jianlian, the 7 foot Chinese small forward, provoking this response from Ford:

Chad: Has there ever been an international player you did like, Bill? You’re the Lou Dobbs of NBA sportswriters. I’m waiting for your new book “War on American Hoops.”

Too bad they can’t build a wall around every NBA arena.

Bill: I’m very xenophobic when it comes to the NBA draft — too many foreign guys have bombed miserably, everyone underestimates the cultural adjustment. For every Nowitzki, there’s been four Darkos. For every Tony Parker, there’s been four Beno Udrihs. We overrate the younger foreigners, even though they’re playing against crappy competition, and we underrate the older foreigners (like Oberto, Hermann, Garbajosa and others), even though they’re tough and know how to play the game. I don’t get it. What a screwed-up league.

Which is why we stick to supporting H-1B basketball visas. For the most skilled.

But anyway, how interesting to see Dobbs emerge as a cultural point of reference. Not since Father Coughlin (who was really foul prone)…

Join the discussion 3 Comments

A few months ago I watched Bill Gates testify to the Senate on the H1b visa program. Microsoft needs today, 3000 highly skilled individuals to fill jobs in Seattle. The workers just aren’t there. The richest man on the planet, who has given away more money than anyone else needs more skilled workers to compete. I say let him have them. While we run in place hoping that market forces increase salaries to pull Americas to these positions, other countries gain an edge. H1b visa jobs are high paid positions and the meager numbers we bring in (only 65,000) shouldn’t displace anyone. If it depresses wages than only slightly. Would I suddenly switch careers because my $85,000 job went down to $84,000 because of a few Indian programmers. Nope, I’d rather compete in the world economy than fall farther behind.

The H-1B Visa is simply being used by Corporate America to replace white collar professionals with cheap foreign labor from India and China. This decreases wages and taxes to the governemnt. The only people helped are Corporate shareholders and the governments of India and China. The fact that Lou Dobbs opposes this does not make him a Father Coughlin but rather a sane human being. I see it everyday in the IT industry. A 50 year old woman who makes 80K with a family will have her job cut and 2 weeks later a 25 year old kid from India whos’ paid 40K will be sitting in her cubicle. If you support that then that’s your values. But, at least acknowledge that Corporate America does this to save money and for no other reason. And also a government that supports replacing citizens in jobs with non-citizens tend to go against our cultural history. But, at least be honest about it rather than calling people who disagree with you racists and xenophobes. It must be nice always going for low hanging fruit because you don’t have to exercise your brain muscles. Now, give yourself a big ol’ existential pat on the back for being such a wonderful, open-minded politcally correct person.